


doctor / inquisitor / wife

by mag003 (MMagpieMcCorkle)



Series: the ghost who walks, she's on the prowl [3]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24021646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMagpieMcCorkle/pseuds/mag003
Summary: Three stages in Naoko's life.
Relationships: Katagawa Jr. & Naoko Katagawa, Naoko Katagawa/Original Character(s)
Series: the ghost who walks, she's on the prowl [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731622
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	doctor / inquisitor / wife

**Author's Note:**

> (reposted. :flushed:)
> 
> tw: torture, child abuse (implied), domestic abuse (referenced), medical setting, murder and body mutilation/forced self-harm, child death (offscreen)
> 
> other characters mentioned (some more than others, lol): Fuyuko/Mrs Katagawa, Handsome Jack, Katagawa Sr., other Katagawa siblings (Gorou), other friends (Rakesh and Hannah), Rhys

**i. doctor**

One of the office lights is buzzing, and when Akihiko mutters under his breath, "you should fix that," Naoko only tuts in response, the majority of her focus honed in on fine-tuning the mechanisms in her brother's arm, as per his request. Well, 'request' would be mild. Not that she'd shy away from something like this, seeing as she was the leading doctor behind his initial surgery -- right arm, right eye. Again, _requests_. The others weren't exactly rushing to give him what he asked for -- what would _help_ him.

(And, not to be selfish, but she figured it'd indebt him to her, in some way. Although she'd act so modest and never ring up for collection.)

Aki shifts, and she tuts again, pulling him back. "Keep _still_ , or I'm gonna flip something."

"It keeps flickering in my _eyes_ , Naoko."

"Close your eyes, then."

A huff, but it seems he takes her suggestion on board which is a relief, and keeps sat still; he rarely ever does listen to her, so she rarely ever suggests anything to him anymore, at least not in any serious capacity. Still, she'll miss this sort of semi-civil quiet between them, because whatever unity they had is dead and buried.

Then he shifts again with a grunt, and she seethes through her teeth at him.

"What'd I _say_ \--"

"I can't close my _ears_ , Naoko."

So Naoko stomps over to the light on the wall and, taking a still-bloodstained wrench (was that Dominicks, or Dodson, or Bauer, or--?), swings at it, cracks at it until it falls off the wall. Turning back to Aki, she breathes heavily. "Better?"

"Better."

"Good." She gets back to work on his arm. When she's finished, she says, perhaps half-knowing that he'd say yes because he's the _beacon of innovation_ in this family, "If you ever wanted, I could make you a new left arm, as well."

"That's certainly something to think about," he says all too quickly. Maybe he was already thinking about it. It doesn't surprise her.

He rebuffs her when she talks about a new eye, of course. Black sclera and gold iris is _**such** _a sexy look, though, she insists. He only snorts and taps near the ECHOport and... says something about the company and blah, blah, blah. She _gets_ it, although it all blends together now. "Although," he adds, his tone like a creeping cat, the one that raises the hair on the back of her neck (and raises everyone else's hackles, too, when he's like this), "I might give it some thought. For the future." A short chuckle from the familiar smile he has that definitely _screams_ Head of Mergers and Acquisitions. "Might even go with a total rebranding, then." Only then does he turn back towards her. Shark-toothed. "What do you think, Naoko?"

"Perfect." She only just manages to keep her voice sounding normal, not like the words are being strangled in her throat. "Suppose I could wait until then. Might even get everyone else on board with the whole ECHOeye thing."

"Right."

He's not talking about the 'ECHOeye thing', they both know that.

* * *

**ii. inquisitor**

Mother's abundance of seemingly-appointed company rivals is... impressive. Bold even with Hyperion's new CEO strangling the reins.

Naoko should've kept the contraption under tighter wraps. Even then, the idea of curing every single mental illness ever was surely a pipe dream. Even Gorou had thought it dead in the water; his thin smile told her as much, even before Mother laid eyes on the Chair. He had said he appreciated the thought and had pulled her into a tired sidehug; they lingered in it.

All that aside, it is perhaps Naoko's greatest achievement: the Chair itself is a dentist's chair reused and refurbished with needles and wires intended to physically manipulate the brain. Yeah, a cure now seems childish and overly hopeful, but so far it's worked well as an instrument of torture on Mother's victims -- Maliwan defectors, smaller up-and-coming companies' CEOs, other megacorporations' underlings if she thought they held valuable information, and woe to those that tried to blackmail her, or hold information "for a price".

As much as Fuyuko actively dislikes her youngest daughter, she trusts her enough to carry out these tasks diligently and single-handedly, with a 100% success rate. And, perish the thought before it's born, but she even looks at Naoko with something approaching pride when Naoko manages to extract what she asks for. It's like violence -- wanting more of it, ashamed that she does.

There's plenty of good that comes out of acting as Maliwan's unofficial inquisitor and executioner, besides Mother giving Naoko less grief than she used to: Naoko's application of what she knows about the human brain is yielding incredibly interesting results when she prods at the hippocampi, how she is able to manipulate them into spilling secrets after trial-and-error (wherein the subject would tell her a tasty recipe for homemade bread, or curse her up and down without rest, or clamp up involuntarily with a sealed whimper), and she even manged to manipulate one particularly _nasty_ subject -- worse than the usual wife-beating, kid-smacking fare, because that's what all the others were -- to move his limbs to her accord and mutilate himself. Although that last required freeing the straps from around his arms and legs, and she can't really risk that again, just in case the subject frees itself entirely and... causes more trouble than it's worth. Dominicks would be an example of that, she supposes, but that was more a case of him managing to bite her while he was still tethered to the Chair and her being clumsy (sleepless for days, bored, feeling kinda weird).

And when all the information is extracted, recorded for Mother, Naoko leaves them to stew for a bit. Later, she returns to beat them to death. Family frustrations work well as fuel, and Mother knows that well.

Either way, fun and guilt-free violence -- expendable brain matter flying in her face, shards of nameless men's skulls, and blood in its fine and familiar sprays.

(Mother attempted to coerce Naoko into torturing a child, an eight-year-old girl, daughter of some company named something she cannot recall. To what end, other than to push Naoko, she doesn't know. She refused, shakily, and Mother cracked her face against the table repeatedly. Naoko's first death, and the resulting sloppy v-shaped scar on her face. Mother takes matters into her own hands and kills the girl herself, and the girl's family. Mother's ravenous appetite seems genetic.)

("Your wife's a fucking psychopath."  
"An admirable trait in this line of work, daughter. By the way, how's the concept you've been working on coming along?")

(When Naoko comes back an hour later, they don't talk about it. A glitch in the matrix. Not Naoko's self-augmentation so carefully kept a secret that not even Mother knows.)

* * *

**iii. wife**

The market is a distraction of smells, and if it weren't for the fact that she and Honey were walking with a throng of people both in front and behind, Naoko would stop to close her eyes and enjoy it at leisure. As is, the oranges and breads and pies and many other foods mingle together, and dip out, and come back, some fainter so as to tease Naoko with a hint of what it might be, and others mouthwateringly strong.

They're buying ingredients for lemon cake, Naoko's favourite. Not a traditional birthday cake, they both know, but Naoko's the birthday girl in two days, and birthday girl gets what birthday girl wants.

It's nice. Being a real person with her own name and not dragging Hannah's ghost around in that suit of Atlas armour and no more bounty on her head and being married and actually in the region of being genuinely happy -- it's nice. And some people say nice is boring, and Naoko agrees, thinks that violence is more adrenaline-pumping, active, and it used to be one of the few things, if not the _only_ thing, that made her feel alive -- but she'll take 'boring' for her peace of mind. Not an inquisitor, not a ghost, not an assassin, not even a daughter or sister anymore -- just someone's wife, and an Atlas analyst and doctor under her own name. Her hyphenated name.

"I'm still surprised you wanted to keep it."

"My name?"

"Mm. Your family name, anyway."

Naoko wrinkles her name. "Well, it's something of a double-edged sword. But I also like the double-barrelled name. Doctor Katagawa-Ayodele."

Honey laughs, lovely and loud and with a cute snort that sticks sweetly in Naoko's chest. "Doctor Katagawa-Ayodele and her..." She scrunches her nose up in exaggerated thought which Naoko wants to kiss, the public be damned (at least in theory -- actually indulging in public will set her skin on fire). "Her... _trophy wife_ \--" Naoko bursts into sharp staccato laughter, surprised. "--Missus Honey Ayodele-Katagawa."

"Aww," Naoko coos, coming down quick from her giggles, "didn't think you'd ever take the name on, considering it's..." Her turn, now, to scrunch up her nose in thought. "Well. Yeah. You know."

"Well, it's you, now. Just you."

"Yeah."

Quiet again, picking and humming and hawing over ingredients and ready-made foods in hushed and sensible discussion.

Her birthday falls on the same day that Akihiko died. Got killed. Passed away. She frowns, trying to decide which way to describe it is best. 'Got killed' sounds closest, and she's thankful to the Vault Hunters for taking care of it-- _him_ for her, because she knows she couldn't and wouldn't due to still clinging, even then (and now, two years later), to what there used to be. She wasn't lying when she said he was her favourite brother; she wasn't mocking him.

"Bee?" Oh, the nickname, from whole person to whole person but a wonderful unity-- "Bee." Honey shakes her arm. "Wakey-wakey."

"Mm?"

"You're out of it again."

"Oh."

She's done with mourning. Kind of. Sort of. Not really. It comes and goes in waves? Well, shit, any hope of leaving it all completely in the past -- her brother who she had loved the most included -- was as much of a pipe dream as a cure for all mental illnesses. Disastrously hopeful at thirty as she was at fifteen.

Honey relinks their arms, and Naoko melts all over again, still melting when Honey tentatively talks about her own sisters and maybe inviting them over on Naoko's birthday, and she's happy for that, that Honey is still trying despite-- she squeezes her wife's hand. If she really were the PDA type (gross, performative), she brings Honey's hand to her mouth and kiss her on the knuckles. As is, she'll save such intimate things for later, when they're at home, alone and in the quiet.

(That night, after a couple of rounds in bed -- let it not be said that Naoko isn't enthusiastic in all her remaining passions -- Honey mentions that Rhys sent them a message with congratulations and well-wishes for their honeymoon. "That's nice. Another round?" Honey laughs and nods.)

It's nice, boringly nice. The fear that it could be ripped away like anything else she'd ever loved is never far away, but she'll cling to it so tightly.

**Author's Note:**

> Akihiko is the name i give to Katagawa Jr  
> apologies if i got any medical information wrong lmao. double apologies if none of this makes ANY fucking sense i really do just Ramble  
> also i did Not expect this one to get as long as it did? bhghbhgbhg word vomit REAL


End file.
